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Rudy Gobert is the NBA's most dominant defender

By Phillip Barnett | Last updated 4/9/18

There may not be a statistical figure you’ll see all season that shows the comprehensive impact a single player has on his basketball team more than this: The Utah Jazz concede the best opponent field goal percentage when Rudy Gobert is on the bench; the Utah Jazz concede the worst opponent field goal percentage when Rudy Gobert is on the floor. For everything brilliant that rookie Donovan Mitchell has done for the Jazz this year, the team's core identity lies somewhere on the spectrum of Gobert’s 7-foot-8 wingspan; any attempts to heave an ideal counter to this shall not move beyond his outstretched arms.

The NBA couldn’t be anywhere further from an identity crisis. More than any time in the league’s history, it knows exactly what it is and what it wants to be. There has been an evolution on the offensive end that has left many of the country’s lumbering men wondering whether there is a place for them in the future of basketball. For some, the challenge created never-seen-before giants on the perimeter. Kevin Durant and Giannis Antetokounmpo are de facto guards while Anthony Davis, DeMarcus Cousins and Kristaps Porzingis are ushering in a new era of multidimensional big men.

It’s not hard to see why any new seven-footer entering the league today may have a discernible level of existential angst if he can’t run the break as well as his smaller counterparts or disrupt other parts of the game not traditionally reserved for big men. Then there is Gobert, who is disrupting the very fabric of what a traditional big should be. Not only is he the NBA’s preeminent rim protector, but he may be the only one who matters.

What makes Gobert so dominant on that end is that his patience leads to anticipation, and the anticipation leads to Utah stops. What makes Gobert unique is that the anticipation isn’t his; it belongs to whoever dares enter the paint with Utah’s center under the rim. Watching guards wander into Gobert’s territory is akin to watching tourists in a safari jeep nervously wondering what in the entire hell they got themselves into as a leopard paws at a window. There is a deep-rooted knowledge that one should not try Gobert, but guys attempt for the experience and eventually end up on YouTube looking ridiculous.

The beauty in watching Gobert is that, more often than not, he’ll try to keep a ball in play after blocking a shot. Utah, like most teams driven by youth, is better in transition, and a demoralizing blocked shot just feels better than a missed shot careening off the side of the iron. In certain situations, however, Gobert has no issue throwing a shot into the seventh row or beyond the half-court line. Whether his actions are team-friendly and functional or tone-setting and flat-out rude, he has taken this Jazz team to heights no one expected following the loss of Gordon Hayward.

If there is one weakness that Gobert has, it’s being forced to defend in space. Teams like the Warriors and Rockets have the style and personnel to take him out of his comfort zone, running through myriad high pick-and-roll sets, forcing him to switch onto smaller, more versatile playmakers. Despite his length and ability to move, there is an uncomfortability that Gobert rarely comes to term with when defending shifty players on the perimeter. Not only does he have trouble staying in front of speedy guards, but the switches take him away from the rim and render him utterly useless when his panoramic view of developing plays is transformed into a single-focused tunnel vision of one man. Pulling Gobert out of the paint sets up cutters on the weak side for easy looks at the rim.

It’s not a complicated notion, but Utah is essentially playing a numbers game. The number of teams that can fully take advantage of Gobert’s lone weakness on the defensive end when fully healthy is two. Not every team in the league has the shooters and ball handlers to throw effective small lineups to stifle Utah’s vaunted defense. Unfortunately for Utah, the two teams that have the talent to do this are in the same conference. Should the Jazz move on to the Western Conference Finals, they’ll have to find a way to stop the Rockets or Warriors, which means Gobert is going to have to find a new home defending in space.

Projecting the future is meaningless with a few regular-season games left to play. The Jazz are the fourth Western Conference team to lock up a playoff spot, but they can still rise as high as No. 3 or fall as far as No. 8 depending on how this final week plays out. What we do know is that Utah is only in a position to play extra basketball because of Gobert’s presence on the defensive end of the floor, and how much the Jazz disrupt the competitive balance out West is entirely up to him.

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